The race in which each had been nominated has been deleted from the program owing to a lack of entries.

The event failed to attract the minimum six nominations required for a race to be run.

Harness Racing Victoria chief executive officer Dayle Brown told radio RSN that it was disappointing the race was not going to take place.

He said the rules were clear. There is no discretion.

He said there must be a minimum of six acceptors

Brown said while the race offered a great marketing opportunity, HRV did not want to be changing rules just to make something happen.

He said HRV needed to be consistent and fair to all.

Brown said the rule could be reviewed but it was dangerous to make changes on the run.

"We need to look at programming to see how can make it happen."

The most anitcipated head-to-head harness racing clash in years is set for Ballarat on Saturday night.

Ballarat's Ride High and Shepparton's Lochinvar Art will meet for the first time in their careers on the Bray Raceway circuit.

They duo are touted as potentially the best pacers in Australia and aniticpation of seeing them racing side-by-side has been building since Ride High returned from an extended break in June.

Ride High, trained by Clayton Tonkin at Cardigan, and Lochinvar Art originally appeared set to meet at Shepparton on August 15.

However, while Ride High made the trip, Lochinvar Art's trainer-driver David Moran had to change his plans after his four-year-old performed below par in running third in Ballarat a week earlier.

Ride High stretched his unbeaten run this preparation to five in that outing at Shepparton.

Lochinvar Art returned at Bendigo on Saturday night and was back to his best.

Each has explosive speed, with Lochinvar Art having a career-best winning mark of 1:48.6 at Melton, while Ride High ran 1:49 two starts ago to smash the Bendigo track record.

Moran said while Lochinvar Art was not as rock-hard fit as he would like to take on Ride High after the interruption to his preparation, race programming left him no choice but to take up the challenge now.

"It'd be nice to have a couple more runs."

Moran told RSN radio that Lochinvar Art had come through the Bendigo run terrifically.,

"All the signs are positive. He needed the run.

"I am not going to say I'm confident, but if we drew inside Ride High he'd have to be good to beat us.

"It'd be nice to have a couple more runs."

While there were calls earlier in the season for a two-horse match race, they will clash in Ballarat under normal race conditions.